Five more Who books, of which three are decidedly skippable and two rather good.

( Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons )
( Doctor Who - the Mind of Evil )
( Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos )
( Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon )
( Doctor Who and the Dæmons )

So, on to the Third Doctor books, starting with three Dicks efforts of varying quality, and a good one by Malcolm Hulke; all covering stories first broadcast in 1970.

( 6) Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion, by Terrance Dicks )
( 7) Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters, by Malcolm Hulke )
( 8) Doctor Who - the Ambassadors of Death, by Terrance Dicks )
( 9) Doctor Who - Inferno, by Terrance Dicks )

( Northern Ireland and Doctor Who )

I've headlined this post by referring to Liz Shaw, but in fact she doesn't come across particularly well on the printed page and, given my childhood memories of the first two of these books, I was surprised by how much I liked Caroline John in the TV role when I watched. I am beginning to spot a pattern where the brainy companions (Zoe and Liz) don't transfer well to the novelisations, whereas the screamy ones (Victoria, Polly and I expect Jo) actually come over rather better.

5) About Time: The Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who, 1985-1989

This is the last (so far) of the About Time series of guides to Doctor Who, covering not only all the Seventh Doctor series and all but the first of the Sixth Doctor stories, but also the 1999 TV movie, the misconceived 1993 Dimensions in Time piece, The Curse of Fatal Death and the two Peter Cushing movies. Tat Wood is the main credited author (Lawrence Miles being absent this time, but with "additional material" by Lars Pearson and a defence of The Two Doctors by Robert Shearman).

As in previous volumes, Wood's sarcastic yet affectionate humour makes it a good read, even though it's the period of the programme's history I probably know least well. There are some brilliantly sardonic one-liners which I was regrettably unable to refrain from reading aloud to anyone who would listen. The explanatory essays are as good as ever. Slightly disappointed with the editing - there seem to be a lot more typoes than usual, and some other structural glitches as well. But any serious fan needs to get this.

4) Decalog 2: Lost Property, edited by Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker

A collection of ten DW short stories (actually one has no Doctor, but does have Sarah Jane, Mike Yates, K9 and the Master). As usual, of varying but mostly good quality; I hope any of the other contributors who read this will forgive me for favouriting the two Fourth Doctor / Leela stories, one by Tim Robins and set on a commercially exploited Mars, the other by Pam Baddeley and setting settlers against indigenous people on a planet with its own bizarre legal culture. Apart from that, I enjoyed all the rest except the one with Zoe and Jamie and the one with Peri and the peculiar timeshare.

I'd already read probably the best Jamie / Zoe novel, Doctor Who - The Invasion, by Ian Marter, and also the worst, Doctor Who and the Dominators, also oddly enough by Ian Marter. Four of the other six are fairly standard efforts by Terrance Dicks, but the other two present points of interest.

( 35) Doctor Who - The Wheel in Space, by Terrance Dicks )
( 36) Doctor Who - The Mind Robber, by Peter Ling )
( 37) Doctor Who and the Krotons, by Terrance Dicks )
( 38) Doctor Who - The Seeds of Death, by Terrance Dicks )
( 39) Doctor Who - The Space Pirates, by Terrance Dicks )
( 40) Doctor Who and the War Games, by Malcolm Hulke )

So, that's it for the Second Doctor novelisations. I finished up my read-through of the First Doctor novels by regretting that almost nobody manages to capture Hartnell's performance on the printed page. Troughton (who perhaps put less of his own personality into the part than any other Doctor before Davison) is easier to pin down, the visual aspects of his performance more easily described. Of the other regulars, I felt that Victoria gains most, and Zoe loses most, on the printed page. Perhaps it is easier to inject some gravitas into the rather two-dimensional Victoria than to convey how stunningly cute Wendy Padbury is as Zoe.

The best of the Second Doctor novelisations are John Peel's Doctor Who - The Power of the Daleks, Terrance Dicks' Doctor Who and the Web of Fear, Peter Ling's Doctor Who - The Mind Robber and Ian Marter's Doctor Who - The Invasion, with honourable mentions to Doctor Who - The Evil of the Daleks, the other three early Season 5 books, and Doctor Who and the War Games. None is quite as good as the best of the First Doctor novelisations, though.

Since I am reading these on my commute and am taking a long weekend chez scattyme in France, it'll be a while before I do the next lot.

Just because I'm reading the novels doesn't mean I am neglecting my duties to the original classic television series (though I imagine I will finish the novels first). But I realise I've fallen behind a bit in recording my reactions to them since the start of last month.

( The Brain of Morbius: Fourth Doctor and Sarah reprise Frankenstein )
( The Pirate Planet: Fourth Doctor, Romana I and K-9 do battle with Douglas Adams )
( Warrior's Gate: Fourth Doctor, Romana II, K-9 and Adric at the junction of the universes )
( Arc of Infinity: Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa meet the future Sixth Doctor and Omega )
( The Two Doctors: Sixth Doctor and Peri meet Second Doctor and Jamie and do battle with the Sontarans )
( Time and the Rani: newly regenerated Seventh Doctor and Mel deal with renegade Time Lady )

So, in summary, The Brain of Morbius and Warrior's Gate are real classics, and The Two Doctors held up better than I had expected; skip the rest.

32) The Cornelius Quartet: The Final Programme , A Cure for Cancer, The English Assassin, The Condition of Muzak, by Michael Moorcock

Another classic of speculative fiction, which I have now read: the complex tales of Jerry Cornelius, his family, his allies and his enemies. It's difficult to call it a novel, or a collection of novels; the first book perhaps comes closest to having a conventional plot, but the second and third books in particular are rather free of the contraints of linearity. You have to really let the word pictures wash over you without expecting the narrative to behave as we are used to plots behaving. There's a consistent sort of post-Empire awareness behind the scenes, which sometimes bubbles to the top: in one passage in the fourth book, various English groups are presented as if native tribes in some far-off colony. Often such experiments seem just boring and self-indulgent, but this kept my interest.

( a long note about Doctor Who )

These five Who books are all from 1967-68 stories, but from different ends of the chronology of publication. The first of these was in fact the very last of the official novelisations produced by Target/Virgin, in 1993; the other four were among the first five Second Doctor books, published between 1974 and 1978 by Target. Having been underwhelmed by my last clutch of Who books reviewed, I'm happy to report that all of these are good stuff.

( 27) Doctor Who - The Evil of the Daleks, by John Peel )
( 28) Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen, by Gerry Davis )
( 29) Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen, by Terrance Dicks )
( 30) Doctor Who and the Ice Warriors, by Brian Hayles )
( 31) Doctor Who and the Web of Fear, by Terrance Dicks )

So that's it for the Jamie/Victoria combination. While Victoria, apart from in Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen, is the screamiest girl companion since Susan, the affectionate interactions between the Tardis crew are almost (but not quite) as entertaining on the page as on the screen.

All five of these books are medium good, and four of them are important as the perspective through which fans of my age first encountered the Second Doctor. The best of them is certainly Doctor Who and the Web of Fear, which wraps up one line of continuity (the Yeti and Travers) while setting up another (the Brigadier and UNIT). But all are worth adding to the serious Who fan's library. (The same can't be said for the other two novels of this run, alas.)

Five novelisations of Second Doctor stories, all originally broadcast in 1967. None of them specially good, and a couple which are pretty dire, but all very quick reading for my commute.

( 22) Doctor Who - The Highlanders, by Gerry Davis )
( 23) Doctor Who - The Underwater Menace, by Nigel Robinson )
( 24) Doctor Who and the Cybermen, by Gerry Davis )
( 25) Doctor Who - The Macra Terror, by Ian Stuart Black )
( 26) Doctor Who - The Faceless Ones, by Terrance Dicks )

In summary, your life will not be incomplete for lack of having read any of these! These are the five books featuring Ben, Polly and Jamie in the regular cast; it is remarkable how much more interesting Polly is as a character than the other two. Shame she didn't stay longer.

20) Doctor Who - The Power of the Daleks, by John Peel

John Peel continues his run of excellent Who books with this, the first story of Patrick Troughton's incarnation of Doctor Who. It is a favourite of mine anyway - I cannot understand why fannish opinion generally prefers the later Evil of the Daleks - but Peel, equipped with David Whitaker's original scripts (retrieved, apparently, from his ex-wife's attic) and benefiting from some editorial decision to give him 250 rather than 125 pages to tell the story, has done an excellent job.

On reflection, it's also because this is a relatively unusual Dalek story, presenting them not as a rival galactic empire to us humans but as in some way a dark reflection of our own desires about ourselves. The only other televised story that comes close to doing that is Robert Shearman's Ninth Doctor story.

Anyway, Peel turns a good TV story (as far as we can judge, since it is one of the lost ones) into a good novel. An encouraging start to my reading up on the Second Doctor.

And so I reach the end of the first phase of this insane project, the last two novelisations featuring William Hartnell's incarnation of the Doctor.

( 17) Doctor Who - The Smugglers, by Terrance Dicks )
( 18) Doctor Who and the Tenth Planet, by Gerry Davis )

So, that's it for the First Doctor novelisations. The best ones are David Whitaker's original Doctor Who and the Daleks, Ian Marter's Doctor Who - The Rescue and Donald Cotton's Doctor Who - The Romans, with honorable mentions to the other four by those three authors, John Lucarotti's Doctor Who - Marco Polo and the three Dalek novelisations by John Peel. None of them is quite the real thing though: Hartnell's performance was so strongly visual that it is impossible to catch on the printed page. The only way to really get a flavour of early Who is to watch it.

On to the Troughton era now...

Three good ones this time, though whether they represent two or three broadcast stories is a matter of opinion!

( 13) Doctor Who - The Myth Makers, by Donald Cotton )
( 14) Doctor Who - Mission to the Unknown, by John Peel )
( 15) Doctor Who - The Mutation of Time, by John Peel )

I'd recommend all three of these. Next for me, since I've already read the Dodo novelisations, is Doctor Who - The Smugglers.

Three more books in my ongoing project, based on the last few stories of the 1964-65 season.

( 9) Doctor Who - The Space Museum, by Glyn Jones: not particularly impressive )
( 10) Doctor Who - The Chase, by John Peel: a good novel based on a less good story )
( 11) Doctor Who - The Time Meddler, by Nigel Robinson: better than I feared )

I've already read Doctor Who - Galaxy Four so next are the intermingled narratives of the Myth Makers and the Daleks' Master Plan.

Well, I enjoyed it. ( Why? )

From my friends list, mostly with spoilers: Generally positive to enthusiastic notes from calapine here, stellanova here, altariel (succinctly) here, ephiriel here, and (I think) wwhyte here. A moderate view from lonemagpie here. Rather less enthusiasm from snapesbabe here (also spoilers for last night's Torchwood), inannajones here, ajshepherd here, and especially pickwick here.

Various sources are reporting the death of Johnny Byrne, who wrote much of the hit series All Creatures Great and Small (based on the pseudonymous reminiscences of Yorkshire vet "James Herriot", and starring among others a youthful Peter Davison) and also wrote three Doctor Who stories, The Keeper of Traken, Arc of Infinity and Warriors of the Deep (two of which also starred an only slightly less youthful Peter Davison).

Mercifully, few Who fans will be aware of Byrne's peculiar participation on Usenet newsgroups discussing the break-up of Yugoslavia in the mid-1990s. He was determined to demonstrate the evils of the 1941-45 Croatian regime, which were indeed manifest and horrible, but went too far in appearing to argue that the deeds of the Croats fifty years before excused or exonerated the activities of the Serbs in the more recent conflict. The archives are all there on Google; but they basically demonstrate that he was more successful when writing his own fiction than when trying to peddle other people's.

3) Doctor Who and the Zarbi, by Bill Strutton
4) Doctor Who and the Crusaders, by David Whitaker

These were the other two Doctor Who books published in the 1960s, after the initial success of Whitaker's Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks. Both feature Hartnell's First Doctor with original companions Ian and Barbara, and relatively new girl Vicki.

( Doctor Who and the Zarbi )
( Doctor Who and the Crusaders )

1) Doctor Who - The Romans, by Donald Cotton

I had been looking forward to this one, famed as one of the best Doctor Who novelisations, and I was not disappointed. Cotton has recast the narrative of Dennis Spooner's TV script into epistolary/diary form: letters from Ian Chesterton to his headmaster, the Doctor's own diary, letters from Ascalis the assassin and Locusta the poisoner, and contributions also from Barbara, the Emperor Nero, and Nero's wife Poppæa (but not Vicki); the whole thing framed in a covering note by Tacitus (obviously written several decades later). Eye of Heaven, the best of the spinoff novels featuring Leela, also featured multiple first-person viewpoints, and I've read first-person narratives in other First Doctor stories (here, here, and partly here), but this is the only case of the whole thing being ostensibly done from written records (the Doctor having compiled everything and then left it behind in the villa for the archivists to discover).

Admittedly, as an actual story it's no great shakes, and purists will be disappointed that we lose a lot of the funny lines from the TV version and one of its major comic elements (the two pairs of time travellers not actually meeting each other in their wanderings). But the whole thing is done for language and laughs; it's meant to be fun, and it is fun, and that's all you can really ask.

44) Venusian Lullaby, by Paul Leonard

I wasn't overwhelmed with the only other Paul Leonard DW book I'd read, but I must say this one really grabbed me. Jon Pertwee's Doctor used to tell us that "Klokleda partha menin klatch" meant "Close your eyes, my darling - well, three of them at least" (see here, at about 1:20 in). Here Paul Leonard has taken that throwaway line and constructed one of the best alien cultures I've ever read around it; reminiscent a little of both the pentagonal creatures of At the Mountains of Madness (though a lot less evil) and David Brin's Alvin the Hoon, but faced with an imminent world-destroying tragedy - this is Venus of several billion years ago, still habitable though steadily deteriorating. It's set immediately after The Dalek Invasion of Earth and before The Rescue, so the Doctor is here with Ian and Barbara but no younger female companion. Leonard, like most writers, cannot write Hartnell's Doctor especially well, but the story and the setting more than compensate. An unexpected pleasure.

41) Doctor Who - Planet of Giants, by Terrance Dicks
42) Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth, by Terrance Dicks

Two quite different Terrance Dicks novelisations here. Doctor Who - Planet of Giants was literally the last First Doctor story to see print, in 1990; Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth was from much earlier in the sequence of publication, in 1977. In fact they are respectively the last and the first Dicks novelisations of Hartnell stories.

I’m slightly surprised to report that Doctor Who - Planet of Giants is the better novel, perhaps because it had only three episodes on TV rather than six and therefore Dicks has had to pad rather than summarise; and his own powers of invention, once brought to bear, are helpful. We do miss out on the broadcast story’s key selling point, the visual special effects of the Doctor and company miniaturised to an inch in height, but the plot as a whole does hang together, though fans of Barbara will (as usual) complain that Dicks doesn’t do her character much justice. And once again, as with Doctor Who and an Unearthly Child, Dicks finishes by telling us that the Daleks are out there waiting to start the next adventure which is a bit tedious second time round..

Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth leans a bit on the Peter Cushing film as well as on the originally broadcast story. Its most remarkable innovation, and improvement on the screen version, is the Daleks’ pet monster, the Slyther, which is much more terrifying on the page. But unfortunately a lot of the good bits of the TV story – the desperate chase across a deserted London in episode 3, and even the Doctor’s farewell to Susan at the end – are truncated and lose their effect. It’s still a good story but this comes across rather in spite of than because of Dicks’ efforts.

I’ve already read Doctor Who - The Rescue – probably Ian Marter’s best book – so will head for Doctor Who - The Romans by way of Venusian Lullaby.

Occasionally, by accident or design, I read two or more books with a common theme and combine them into a single livejournal entry (indeed, checking back I see I've done that four times this month). And usually I combine my Big Finish reviews into multiple posts, as an act of mercy to the vast majority of readers who aren't interested. But this time, my reading and listening schedules happened to throw up a Who novel and a Who audio play with an identical central theme, though very different in the execution of that shared theme.

The Council of Nicæa is a relatively short audio play in the Big Finish range, by Caroline Symcox (who I last saw at MeCon). It brings the Peter Davison's Fifth Doctor, his TV companion Peri Brown and new audio companion Erimem to the year 325 and the theological disputes over the nature of God at the eponymous Council. Supporting characters from history are the Emperor Constantine, his wife Fausta, and the competing theologians Athanasius and Arius.

The Witch Hunters, by Steve Lyons, is an early one of the BBC's Past Doctor Adventures, set pretty firmly in TV chronology between The Sensorites and The Reign of Terror, bringing the First Doctor with companions Ian, Susan and Barbara to the village of Salem in Massachusetts in 1692, just in time for the infamous witch trials.

Both are stories in which there is no sfnal element in the historical context apart from the Doctor and his companions, and thus are very much rooted in the early traditions of the show. Both stories are a kind of response in Who terms to other writers - Symcox reacting against J. N. O. Kelly’s Early Christian Doctrines, Lyons more favourably to Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Both of them feature a historical context where, essentially, the bad guys are the mainstream authority Christians and the listener/reader is invited to sympathise with the underdog (Arius and his followers/the accused "witches"). In both cases, the youngest of the Tardis crew (Erimem/Susan) is instrumental in trying to change history in the favour of the underdogs, in both cases (and this is hardly a spoiler) unsuccessfully.

Symcox takes more liberties with the setting (Arius is portrayed as a young man and Athanasius as somewhat older; in fact the reverse was the case), as she is writing a more standard Doctor Who story and also has less time to do it in (less than 100 minutes, compared to Lyons' 282 pages). As often with Who, the Doctor gains the confidence of the authorities rather implausibly rapidly, which then of course accelerates the amount of trouble he and his friends get into. The two key elements of the story are the didactic part, informing the average listener who is (safely) assumed to know very little of the Council of Nicæa, and the character development of Erimem, who sides with Arius partly out of national solidarity (Arius was from Alexandria, Erimem is an ancient Egyptian pricess) but more out of a sense of fair play. She pleads that because 325 is her future, she should not be accused of trying to change the past. It all worked rather well for me, certainly much better than The Church and the Crown, an earlier audio with a similar concept except that the Doctor intervenes to force history into our timeline.

Lyons makes the reader work harder; he has more characters to follow (not just four in the Tardis crew instead of three, but a large chunk of the population of Salem) and more background knowledge is assumed. He is also sticking closer to the historical sequence of events, though The Crucible is explicitly referenced, with the Doctor and crew taking in the first performance in Bristol in 1954, and the Doctor then returning with Rebecca Nurse to take it in again. Actually Lyons handles the possibility of changing history a bit less convincingly than Symcox, with even the Doctor rather un-Doctorishly seduced by the possibility of intervening to save lives. He also requires the Tardis to operate rather more accurately than we saw at this stage of the show's history. Balanced against this, there are a lot of pleasing references to the first few television stories. The narrative has its own drama, which carries the book in the end, but the Tardis crew rather end up with the roles of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Anyway, I found it interesting to compare and contrast between the two approaches - same basic idea, but different format and different details.

37) Doctor Who and the Sensorites, by Nigel Robinson

I was deeply underwhelmed by the TV version of this story, which fights off strong competition from The Web Planet to be probably the worst Hartnell adventure. Curiously, Nigel Robinson actually manages to smooth over the most awful bits of the narrative - the poor acting of the human characters, the poor characterisation of the non-humans - to the point where one feels that there is actually a decent sf tale in there somewhere, trying desperately to get out. Unfortunately the attempt is doomed to failure because of Robinson's plonkingly awful prose style. Some day some keen fan will do a version of this - the Sensorites as they should have been written. Meantime this book is only for completists.

I've already read the next book in sequence, Doctor Who - The Reign of Terror, one of Ian Marter's better efforts, so it's on to Terrance Dicks and Doctor Who - Planet of Giants next. Though I may stop off via The Witch Hunters.

( The Greatest Shop In The Galaxy )
( The Green-Eyed Monsters )
( The Dance Of The Dead )
( The Mirror Effect )

In summary: The Greatest Shop In The Galaxy and The Dance Of The Dead excellent, The Mirror Effect OK, and The Green-Eyed Monsters less impressive. Also of course The Plague Herds of Excelis is set in the middle of this sequence.

I'm fairly steaming through these; at my reading speed, I can basically get through half a Who book on each leg of my commute. (I'm not working tomorrow or Monday, though, so you will be spared for the next few days.)

( 33) Doctor Who - Marco Polo: Lucarotti's best novelisation )
( 34) Doctor Who and the Keys of Marinus: Uneven but a decent effort )

I've already read Doctor Who - The Aztecs, so next up is Doctor Who - The Sensorites. Next week.

32) Doctor Who - The Edge of Destruction, by Nigel Robinson

Robinson has taken a two-episode story and padded it out with some interesting new material of Ian and Barbara exploring the depths of the Tardis. Unfortunately, Robinson's own prose style is thunderously bad in places. For completists only.

26) Match of the Day, by Chris Boucher
27) Last Man Running, by Chris Boucher
28) Corpse Marker, by Chris Boucher
29) Psi-Ence Fiction, by Chris Boucher
30) Drift, by Simon A. Forward
31) Eye of Heaven, by Jim Mortimore

It's interesting that the six Doctor Who spinoff novels featuring the Fourth Doctor and Leela are all from the more recent BBC series of Past Doctor Adventures rather than the earlier Virgin series of Missing Adventures; that all of them are set before K9's arrival in Who continuity; and that four of the six are by Leela's creator, Chris Boucher, who also wrote three of the five TV stories featuring her but not the metal dog. Obviously K9 is more successful with Romana or Sarah Jane (each of the Fourth Doctor's departing female companions having ended up with one).

( Chris Boucher )
( Match of the Day )
( Last Man Running )
( Corpse Marker )
( Psi-Ence Fiction )
( Drift )
( Eye of Heaven )
( Leela )

25) Doctor Who and the Daleks, by David Whitaker

There was a time when this was literally the only Doctor Who book in existence (under its excellent original 1964 title of Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks); indeed it was the only commercially available representation of any Doctor Who story, in those days long before video-recorders (let alone DVDs). So we have Whitaker taking much greater liberty with Terry Nation's TV script than almost any other novelisation (John Lucarotti's treatment of The Massacre differs even more from the story as broadcast, but he was reverting back to his own original script).

And the result is quite possibly the best of the novelisations, judged as a novel. The opening of the story is comprehensively rewritten, Ian being an unemployed research scientist who accidentally encounters Barbara, who has been tutoring the mysterious Susan, and gets involved with the Doctor and his Tardis. So much time is invested - wisely - in setting the scene that we are a third of the way through the book before we reach the equivalent point to the end of the TV story's first episode (out of seven).

The biggest novelty, for those of us who have read almost any of the subsequent hundreds of Who books, is that the whole story is told in the first person, from Ian's point of view. (It's not unknown in later Who literature, but it is very unusual.) This does require a certain amount of narrative juggling, but Whitaker gets away with it better than I remembered from when I first read this, three decades ago.

Today's generation of fans will squee at the pronounced sexual tension in the Ian/Barbara relationship here - the TV story has Barbara close to flirting with Ganatus, one of the Thals, but he barely gets to look at her on the printed page. Poor Susan rather fades into the background as well after she has done her mercy run to the forest. The characterisation of the Doctor is much more harsh and edgy than Hartnell's depiction; since Whitaker was the story editor, perhaps this was what he had originally in mind? (A possibility supported by the surviving first cut of the first ever episode.)

And the Daleks themselves are pretty memorable here, though Whitaker seems a bit confused about their size - three feet high at one point, four foot six at another, though the illustrations are of our "normal" sized pepperpots. However, this confusion is compensated for by the glorious description of the mutants within the metal casings, and their glass-enclosed leader. The TV show has never managed such memorable presentations of the creatures inside, though it has occasionally tried. (The versions encountered by the Ninth Doctor come closest.)

Anyway, this is an excellent read, well worth hunting down.

( The Game: Five and Nyssa bring peace to a vicious planet, with William Russell )

( Dreamtime: Seven, Ace and Hex find Ayers' Rock/Uluru in space )

( Catch-1782: Six and Mel make some genealogical discoveries )

In summary, three unexceptional but decent plays.